Alice in Wonderland

Directed by:
Clyde Geronimi
Wilfred Jackson
Hamilton Luske

Writing credits:
Lewis Carroll
Winston Hibler
Ted Sears
Bill Peet
Erdman Penner
Joe Rinaldi
Milt Banta
William Cottrell
Dick Kelsey
Joe Grant
Dick Huemer
Del Connell
Tom Oreb
John Walbridge

TAGLINE
A world of wonders in One Great Picture.

Plot Outline:
On a golden afternoon, young Alice follows a White Rabbit, who disappears down a nearby rabbit hole. Quickly following him, she tumbles into the burrow – and enters the merry, topsy-turvy world of Wonderland! Memorable songs and whimsical escapades highlight Alice’s journey, which culminates in a madcap encounter with the Queen of Hearts – and her army of playing cards!

Credited cast:
• Kathryn Beaumont … Alice (voice)
• Ed Wynn … Mad Hatter (voice)
• Richard Haydn … Caterpillar (voice)
• Sterling Holloway … Cheshire Cat (voice)
• Jerry Colonna … March Hare (voice)
• Verna Felton … Queen of Hearts (voice)
• J. Pat O’Malley … Tweedledee/Tweedledum/The Walrus/The Carpenter (voice) (as Pat O’Malley)
• Bill Thompson … White Rabbit/Dodo (voice)
• Heather Angel … Alice’s sister (voice)
• Joseph Kearns … Doorknob (voice)
• Larry Grey … Bill (voice)
• Queenie Leonard … Bird in the Tree (voice)
• Dink Trout … King of Hearts (voice)
• Doris Lloyd … The Rose (voice)
• James MacDonald … Dormouse (voice)
• Bill Lee … Card Painter (voice) (as The Mellomen)
• Thurl Ravenscroft … Card Painter (voice) (as The Mellomen)
• Max Smith … Card Painter (voice) (as The Mellomen)
• Bob Hamlin … Card Painter (voice) (as The Mellomen)
• Don Barclay … Card (voice)

Runtime:
75 min

Color:
Color (Technicolor)

Sound Mix:
Mono (RCA Sound System)

Trivia:
* Color screen tests of Mary Pickford as Alice were made for a proposed live-action/animation version of the story.

* Kathryn Beaumont, who was the voice of Alice, narrates the “Alice in Wonderland” ride at Disneyland.

* Sterling Holloway, who performed the voice of the Cheshire Cat, played the Frog in the 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland (1933).

* The first Disney animated feature in which the voice talent is credited on-screen with the characters they each play. This would not occur again until The Jungle Book (1967/I).

* In the Walrus and the Carpenter sequence, the R in the word “March” on the mother oyster’s calendar flashes. This alludes to the old adage about only eating oysters in a month with an R in its name. That is because those months without an R are the summer months, when oysters would not keep due to the heat, in the days before refrigeration.

* This movie contained Dink Trout’s final role.

* Originally, Alice was to sing a song different from “In a World of My Own”. It would be a slow ballad entitled “Beyond the Laughing Sky”, and it was a song about Alice dreaming of a new world, a world better than her own, very much in the spirit of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939). However, Kathryn Beaumont had difficulty singing, and it was decided that starting the film off with a slow ballad would be a little risky on audiences. The song we hear today, “In a World of My Own”, is livelier, and was easier for Kathryn Beaumont to sing.

* Continuing the pattern of film versions of “Alice in Wonderland” not being commercially successful, this movie was a huge box office failure. However, it did become something of a cult film during the 1960s, where it was viewed as a “head film”.

* The movie took five years to complete, but was in development for over ten years before it entered active production.

* This movie is actually a combination of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books, “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass”.

* The Doorknob was the only character in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951) that did not appear in Lewis Carroll’s books.

* This was the first Disney theatrical film to be shown on television, in 1954. It was shown as the second installment of the “Disneyland” (1954) TV show, edited to fit into a one hour time slot.

* This is the only Disney feature-length cartoon film to have its first theatrical re-release after it had already been shown on television (although the film had been televised only in an edited, one-hour version).

* The fish watching the Walrus lure the oysters away are the same fish that watch Pinocchio search for Monstro the whale in Pinocchio (1940).

* Early drafts of the script had Alice encounter the Jabberwock (to have been voiced by Stan Freberg), from Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky”. The sequence was rejected, either because it slowed the story down, or because of concerns that it would be too frightening. Elements of “Jabberwocky” remain in the film, however: the Cheshire Cat’s song “Twas Brillig”, consisting of the opening stanza; and the Tulgey Wood sequence, which includes at least one of the creatures mentioned in the poem, the Mome Raths.

* Lewis Carroll wrote the riddle “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” as nonsense – it has no answer. This has not stopped people, despite being repeatedly told that there is not, nor should there be, any answer, from trying to contrive one. Among the suggestions are, “because Edgar Allan Poe wrote on both” and “because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes” (the second of which is very similar to a solution that Lewis Carroll himself wearily suggested when he grew tired of people asking him about it).

* Though the film was a box-office flop when first released, several years later it became the Disney studio’s most requested 16mm film rental title for colleges and private individuals. In 1974, the studio took note of this fact, withdrew the rental prints, and reissued the film nationally themselves.

* This was the first feature film for which Walt Disney was able to use television for cross-promotion. Walt Disney’s very first television program, One Hour in Wonderland (1950) (TV), which was broadcast on Christmas evening of 1950, was devoted to the production of this film. Naturally, the entire program, including the clips from the movie, were in black and white.

* Walt Disney had considered doing a feature film of this story for years. During the very early part of his career, throughout the 1920s, Walt Disney created a number of shorts with a live action Alice placed in an animated world. Walt Disney continued to make this series, generally referred to as “The Alice Comedies”, which were all silent, right up to time he made Steamboat Willie (1928).